pine cone woodpecker

the oldest and most familiar stockings mean nothing now and
hold nothing. things like, "we met
in the whale's belly" and 

"i thought that wool cap i loved you guinea hen feather."

now all is pine cone woodpecker,
anger fixed like an arrow toward king
and his country,

find yourself to be an outlaw or
a sweetheart submerged in peat

i do not ask questions because
i have too many questions
and no one loves a nail but
we all love slush

alone i am inside an
ornamental bell

or surveying the stop
and drop of a dam

well i say, well
i have no wish to present

to your plummet

Stranger Things

Stranger thing have happened,
I just can't remember when
I offered such a generous harvest, said
Sea-buckthorn and my calendula,
all to be given to
pouting hands

and distracted hounds.
Liliana and Crow go
to find a tree, and I think
on the freedom of a barren
body, spread bald-eagle

offering nothing, taking
nothing

Love Your Amanita

Love your amanita, live silently. All is not so all-encompassing, say the words you love. Hold the bodies you most appreciate the hearts of. Oh you have a sweet heart, you are a good sort, you want for nothing, the drones don't see you, in your purity you are invisible, and I want what you have to be inside of my bones, a light to blow through my body, outside of law, the free-falling leaf

Nannou

When I care, my body
cringes like a blossom on
rewind, and

"What I Once Knew"
is a two-day
train ride away.

We cannot help it that
love is
love is
love, we simply

reduce the sweeter hours to
a poultice, slap
it on our chests

to release the black stuff,

cough it all up
until we are again

the blue milk of the newly born,
soft with mycelium

and somehow eyes
as shiny as a destination penny,

heads or tails.

One of my favorite directors, Ingmar Bergman, is commonly considered to have been motivated by a crisis of faith. His films often touch on characters grappling with Christianity and its figures (i.e. The Seventh Seal, and later, Fanny and Alexander). Even more frequently, though, we are presented with characters that have lost faith in the notion that our lives are guided by something good and sane, as with Alma in Persona, or Anna, in The Passion of Anna.

I got by for many years thinking that, because I was raised secular, I was not a candidate for a crisis of faith. But I was Very Wrong.

There is a magic that is logical, a magic that is very real. It is painful to the heart to watch people that I love live without this knowledge. People make up their minds. So, I have made up my mind to not make up my mind, not about anything, unless it is what I consider to be fact: that little can be ruled out, that without light it is dark, that there is usually some light to be found. I plan on putting many matchbooks to good use.

I've been writing on my typewriter. It hums, and I'm off and running. Some poems I will transcribe here. Some are only for paper. But I'm writing a new chapbook. I even have a short story almost done. The story is called Ballad of Flynn Farm. The chapbook is called,

Stranger Things Have Happened

I just can't remember when.

For Kath Bloom

Push in and
pull out

push in
I say to him if

"Adrienne Rich were a
song-singer,

this song, she would
sing this song"

Rainwash and beeswax
are both better

for the black air than our
religious attempts

How many must I buy before
I am no longer lonely? consider
consider

How many shall I buy to show
them I'm pretty
consider

and

can I hide it all hide hide
so that he will keep loving me once
he starts?


We're not new anymore daddy.

And I am not I, am I.

I am
only as fucked as the man

I give my life to.

How Sweet It Is

He stood you up. In the movies there are always extenuated circumstances that cause the boy to stand the girl up. He was biking to your house on that long country road, but then he got a flat tire, and then he got a ride from a kindly old man in a Studebaker, but then the old man had a HEART ATTACK, I swear ta God, so I drove him to the hospital. And before he died he told me, “You go find that gal of yours. She’s a keeper, I can tell. Take care of ol’ Custer for me (hacking cough).” So that’s how I ended up with this basset hound and I put the bow on him because I feel real bad I missed your special dinner, baby.

But that’s the movies and this isn’t, it’s real life, and that means cold pasta in a pyrex bowl that you curl around your fork and stare at as if it fascinates you, while you think of how he stood you up. But it was not well done, not even interesting. He’s not coming around with a melancholy dog wearing a blue bow.

Whenever something good is supposed to happen, you are happy, so you listen to Karen Dalton sing “How Sweet It Is” and you think, perhaps I will know. But then the good thing doesn’t happen, so as an entertaining twist to your script, ironic or something, you listen to “How Sweet It Is” every time you are disappointed.

You fall asleep and dream you are taking a walk with your mother. She tells you to let it all go. You wake up tired, in a cold room. It’s too big, and the door lets in the night draft.